- FAQ Section -

How it works, it's flaws, and common questions:

A webcam or camera feeds image data to the software (written in C#). the software decides what servo position to send to the servo controller based on calibration, aiming, and target anticipation algorithms. it's an accurate target anticipation method that most other sentries lack. without it, the sentry would always be aimed at where the target used to be due to delay/image lag caused by heavy cpu loads. oh, i'm not giving out the source code. that doesn't make any financial sense. there is no friend/foe identification at the moment. if you move very slow and never make a mistake you can sneak by it. you can disable/blind it by shooting the camera window/face. it can't shoot a bird out of the sky unless it's an ostrich. I can set it to aim at the biggest/fastest moving target and ignore everything else but it changes targets so rapidly between similar targets that it goes ape shit so it just aims for the center of the movement it detects. it's made out of steel. (how that for a bunch of random sentences?)

Future improvements:

I am 90% done with the next sentry prototype (as of 7/8/08). I'm just waiting for parts to come in the mail. This sentry will have an IR camera (with tons of IR leds) so it can see at night. it is now very easy to mount any gun you want on it in less than 2 minutes with only a screwdriver (this was not possible at all with the old one). it also has less mechanical play which improves accuracy. I went back to a tripod mount instead of a case (the case weighed 80 pounds) and the sentry can be mounted on walls and trees now. I plan to integrate a RF keyfob so you can turn multiple sentries on and off all at once. (there's one big problem though. it took me 3 days to build it so I don't know how i'm supposed to reproduce them quickly when they take that long to build. machine shops are wildly expensive and don't want to have anything to do with you unless you want to run high quantities so I think I'll have to get a mill. )

Unit cost and configurations:

I'm thinking there will be 3 main packages; the sentry with a computer (~$1,500), without a computer(~$500-$750) and plans($?). plans won't be available until the rest is available. I will not include a gun because most people will want to put their own on it anyway. the computer i've picked out is a 3GHz mini-ITX pc (anything slower than 2GHz is too slow).